


what falls away is always

by likeoatmeal



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Future Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-07
Updated: 2014-03-07
Packaged: 2018-01-14 21:54:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1280173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likeoatmeal/pseuds/likeoatmeal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Most nights, Mako comes home—different cities and different doorways but always home the moment the door closes behind her—and Raleigh calls out her name before she’s even put her keys away. “Mako.”</p><p>It’s never a question.</p>
            </blockquote>





	what falls away is always

**Author's Note:**

> A lot of the character background and expanded-PR world details were derived from the official movie novelization by Alex Irvine. It's a fun quick read and I highly recommend it. The title comes form The Waking by Theodore Roethke.

The helicopters beat the water to mist around them but they hardly notice, tangled around each other as they are. Arms and legs and shaking hands, touching with ocean-cold fingertips, the ghosting double-sensation of the Drift behind every touch (alive, alive, alive, they are alive).

Inside the helicopter there’s Metharocin for both of them while the medics run their preliminary scans. There’s talk of radiation exposure and oxygen deprivation and cross-dimensional travel and not a damn word of it rings true in Raleigh’s ears. Mako’s hand closes tight around Raleigh’s in the cramped interior of the Sikorsky, adrenaline and relief and grief churn out, a mess of him and her that would be indistinguishable if he ever attempted to pull them apart. It steadies him, like her hand on his and the impression of her that remains inside his head. Mako is discipline and definition, a razor sharp edge of forged steel wielded capably, reminds Raleigh of every possible reason there is for the world to not end.

Besides him she is more, so much more, there aren’t words yet for the vastness of her, the warmth at the core of her that she carries like a pulsing heart. He carries the glow of it inside him now too, like a beacon light guiding him to shore.

-

That first night is hardest. She falls headfirst into consciousness, collides into reality so suddenly it knocks the air loose from her lungs, strangles the last syllable of a half-uttered name from her mouth. She claps her hand over her mouth so forcefully she jars the I.V. embedded in her hand. The pain gets lost in the confusion, the haze of has been-is-will be, memory and day dream and nightmare all bleed together as she sits up. Her heart beats rabbit-quick, looks for shelter that’s no where to be found within the constraint of her ribs. Mako hunches forward, presses her chest to her knees to offer it what meager protection she can. She blinks her eyes to clear them of the afterimage left behind by the orange glare of the Breach, concentrates on the bleached blue light of the medbay instead, her hand still fixed firmly over her mouth, unsure of whether she can trust herself to pull it away yet.

Raleigh says her name quietly—she starts a little, wonders if she woke him or if he woke with her or if he’s slept at all—he sounds it out cautiously like it’s something to be careful with. ( _He called for Yancy after, but he never got an answer. Empty space and all that quiet like a noose around his neck._ )

A cot creaks. A hand closes, calloused and warm, around the nape of her neck (when she was a child, she would wake crying for her mother and father and he would come into her room and sit with her until she went to sleep again. Back when he was only her Sensei and not yet her Marshal and she would go to sleep dreaming of the day she would be like him, strong enough to fight the monsters).

“Hey.” Raleigh’s mouth presses against her cheek, it lingers a breath too long, two, and his face is wet against hers. There has never been time for this before, but now they have it in abundance, all the time in the world to drift in the loneliness of survival.

Mako lets her hand fall away from her mouth, gives into the urge that compels her to fingers to dig into his forearm, takes comfort in the unquestionable realness of him. The bed groans when Raleigh sits at her hip, his dog tags clink quietly, and inexplicably she thinks of Lady Danger, is overcome at the thought of her, ruins in a dying world. His thumb sweeps a recurring arc behind her ear and she touches his face with her free hand, traces his bruised jaw and the blade of his cheekbone, the protrusion of his brow.

Her head hurts. Everything hurts. She tries to remember all her training, the lectures and the warnings regarding Drifting and emotional instability and the importance of reestablishing independence in the wake of a neural handshake. But it all seems a lifetime ago, a world removed from them, leaning against one another in the dark.

( _Not alone_ , Mako thinks, _not alone_.)

-

They release her first. He watches her walk out of the medbay, regulation blues and neatly laced boots back in place, returns the small dip of her dark head before she closes the door.

The hours blur together after her departure, he comes in and out of drug-addled sleep, finds his hands curled into fists at this sides, his fingers gone numb from lack of circulation. There’s a frustrated throb in his right temple and his teeth ache from clenching his jaw so tightly. He can’t remember what, if, he was dreaming, can’t shake the anger that stabs like pins and needles all over his back.

He concentrates on the cracked ceiling tiles overhead, breathes in and out and focuses on the instant relay of pain from his bandaged ribs, his bruised muscles, his tired bones. The anger recedes like a tide pulling away from the shoreline, falling away but still there, just below the surface.

She comes back at lunch time, shoulders tense and smile polite, bearing two trays laden with every possible thing available in the mess. Her anger rushes forward, high tide, when she sits besides him and Raleigh puts two and two together. But he knows that he’s only getting a peripheral impression of it, can’t imagine the force of it building up inside her.

Raleigh leans forward and taps the side of her tray with his fork. “What’s up?”

Her chopsticks still over the grilled beets, her mouth purses. “Mission debrief. It went on for a while.” ( Yes sir. No ma’am. All those people who turned away from Marshal when the world needed them most discussing his death like simulation. Yes ma’am. No sir. Dismissed.) “I’m alright.” She silences all further questioning with a jut of her jaw, motioning for him to eat.

The silence they keep isn’t quite comfortable, but it is necessary. Most Jaeger pilots go into their Drift with a shared history, heightens the chances of compatibly to have two subjects who’s lives already run parallel to one other. He and Mako aren’t the first two to Drift together without that common ground between them, but they’ll be the last. The Breach is closed, the last Jaegers lost in deep waters, the world saved. It’s hard enough having a person’s whole life inside your head, let alone the confusion that results from the hangover. If she needs the space Raleigh doesn’t blame her and he sure as hell won’t push. What’s the point of saving the world and buying back all that time if she can’t take as much of it as she wants for herself.

Before Mako goes she pulls a napkin from her pocket and reveals one of those little egg tarts, cheeks pink and eyes on the brink of hesitation when she sets it down on the tray top between them. “The lunch crew made them to celebrate.” Mako pushes it towards him. He bites it in half (creamy and sweet on his tongue), offers her the other without thinking. Everything they’ve seen and done, he’s not sure why this feels like he’s crossing a line they’ve been playing jump rope with. Mako doesn’t seem as concerned as Raleigh feels, the worst of the shadow leaves her face and she accepts her half gladly, pops the remaining pie in her mouth.

Raleigh can’t speak for the whole world, but right then, he’s pretty sure they’re gonna be alright.

-

Those first few days are chaos. Even free from the medic bay there are still doctors to report to, reporters and officials on top of that, scientists and soldiers crowding the halls for a closer look at the place where the war was won. Across the hall, Raleigh steps out of his quarters in his dress blues, stands on the top step with his arms held out at his sides, awaiting her inspection. Mako cocks her head to the side, takes in the line of his legs and his compact waist, the clean line of his shoulders in his uniform. “You clean nicely.” Very nicely.

He beam at her and hops over the final two steps. “Just trying to keep up with you.” He raises his hand and for a moment Mako thinks he’s going to touch her cheek like he did on the open waters, half-expects him to return the kiss she gave him after she freed him from the escape pod. But Raleigh preserves their distance, twists a piece of blue hair around his finger instead. “ _Kirei_.” Pretty.

She carries the memory of his voice with her for the rest of the day, while she’s standing at attention answering the same questions she answered the day before, and the day before that, and every day since Striker Eureka cleared the way towards the Breach. Anger is a lifelong friend, and it is almost comforting to have it bruising her insides again, gives her the strength to stand tall and still while she completes the task at hand.

They’re apart for most of the day though she can imagine the questions they ask him when she sees him at day’s end, mouth pinched and eyes sharp He rubs a hand over his sandy hair, leaves it sticking up at his forehead.

“What a day Mako.” He sighs, resting his weight against the handrail that leads up to his door. He closes his eyes, lets his shoulders wrinkle as he slumps sideways.

Mako’d read his dossier when Marshal first proposed Operation Pitfall, had added addendums as she selected potential candidates for his co-pilot. She knew him tactically, in numbers and print, studied the longhand of him for so long he was almost as real as the Jaeger standing in the bay. Meeting him, Drifting with him, he’s proven everything she thought he’d be and nothing like she’d expected—unpredictable but not careless, strong but not callous, his confidence fractured but his ability to trust a firebrand in the dark—his mind full of shadows and sunbeams that are foreign and familiar to her now. In the Drift, their minds merged together but in the wake of it she’s left to shift through the influx of him, the pieces all jumbled out of sequence.

Standing in the hallway she is overwhelmed with a memory of salt water, rocky shores and yellow grass, the taste of cinnamon and summer sun—

“What a day,” she echoes, stepping forward until they’re toe-to-toe. He doesn’t open his eyes, just tilts his head towards her like a plant seeking sunlight and she takes it as permission. It’s easy to give into the urge to touch him that’s stained like a watermark since that initial Drift. Mako runs her fingers through the fine hair sticking up at the crown of his head, enjoys the softness it. His mouth loosens a little, a not-quite smile as he leans into the touch. It’s frightening, this ease and the affection that accompanies it. It’s frightening and exhilarating, a free fall she’s finds herself in, sinking fast into the unimaginable (Struggle and you’ll sink faster, or was that an old wives tale, like Jaegers moving alone in the dark, was it his or hers and would it ever matter again?). There’s not enough information to arrive at a conclusion in this new world. Raleigh’s eyes open, his stare focused and still so soft, fond and blue as a summer sky. Mako’s never cowered at the unknown (inside she knows he’s not unknown. He’s not. He’s hers, primitive and possessive as the thought proves, it’s true).

“Would you—“ she starts and takes a single step back towards her quarters. He follows with a step forward, almost like a dance as his hands come to a rest on her waist, warm and steadying.

“Yeah.” he answers softly, or maybe he doesn’t, maybe Mako imagines it, hears the echo of it inside her head seconds before she leans forward, rising on the tips of her toes to press her lips against his. He breathes out sharply, almost startled, and Mako thrills at the idea of taking him by surprise as he kisses her back. His hands slip up her back, her hands bracket his face, and there isn’t enough of either of them, too many places they aren’t close enough, they could be so much closer, so much more—

Cough.

Mako’s feels as though someone’s taken a soldering iron to every single vein in her body when she pulls away from Raleigh (his fingers tighten momentarily at her sides before he lets her go completely and she appreciates the sentiment).

She steels herself, gives Newt a brief perfunctory glance and meets Marshal Hansen’s stare head on.

“Seriously your room is right there.” Newt squeaks, pointing indignantly at Raleigh’s still closed door. Hercules clears his throat again. “Right. Let’s not—” He looks as uncomfortable to have tripped over them as they feel at being found, “Take it inside then.” He pushes past them, and Newt waits until he’s out of Herc’s line of sight to give them both a ridiculously over the top thumbs up. Herc doesn’t turn back when he shouts, “And I don’t want to hear about you two pashing like teenagers in the halls, is that clear.”

Raleigh blinks twice in quick succession like he’s not entirely sure what just happened. His mouth moves silently, testing the shape of a new word. “Pashing?”

Laughter bubbles inside her throat and she shrugs, her face still burning, but she doesn’t hesitate to grab his hand before Newt and Herc turn the corner. Raleigh follows her across the hallway to her door.

-

The days don’t get any easier after that, but something sparks bright as a live wire inside Raleigh’s bones. It’s the same dizzying excitement he felt when she took him to the mat in the kwoon, when she pinned him with a hanbō behind his knee and the steadiness of her eyes, intensified.

_She’s my co-pilot._

She still is.

It’s a trip to know her and learn her all the same. Raleigh could recite the bare bones of her at the drop of a hat (where she was born and the places she’s lived, what scares her and what pushes her forward) but he’s still figuring out how to describe the shift of her face when she yawns in the morning. He’s learning the twitch of her nose when she’s buried in a brief and the sound she makes when she stretches weariness out of her back. He likes it more than he can explain, knowing there’s more to them than the world they shared inside the conn-pod. Some nights when they share her quarters, he rests his head on her stomach and asks about her day while she cards her fingers through his hair. He’ll never feel it for himself, but he can listen, wants to listen. Raleigh wants to share everything she’ll willingly offer. Raleigh floods with gratitude, learns what it is to be overtaken by happiness and doesn’t fight as it drags him away.

Her nails scratch at the short hair on the nape of his neck, so good he groans against the softness of her belly, and she laughs. Mako gives his hair a short tug, a sharp sting that’s a pleasure all its own, “And you? How was your day?”

He rests his jaw against the dip where her shirt covers her navel. Out of all the things Raleigh’s learned since touching down in Hong Kong, it’s still astounding how easy happiness can be.

-

They stay in Hong Kong for almost a year. Neither of them is surprised when the orders come, when they’re told to close shop and move on. They’ve been dwindling for months already, soldiers going home to enjoy their hard won peace. The base is running on barely more than a skeleton crew when they’re decommissioned officially.

They pack their belongings, unabashed about the things that have migrated from their original homes (his sweaters in her drawers, her books on his desk, toothbrushes traversing back and forth across the hallway).

Mako packs the Marshal’s belongings. Raleigh does not offer to help in a task too long postponed, but he already knows that saying goodbye is not done all at once.

So many bases in so many years, but Mako was never homeless so long as he was with her. She can’t keep everything, practicality embedded bone deep and lifelong, but there’s no other choice for her but to carefully fold his uniform with military precision, to wrap it in tissue paper and place it in the small blue suitcase he bought for her meager belongs when he came for her at the orphanage.

After the debriefs and questionings, Mako stood at attention and accepted a Victoria Cross in his name. She’s kept it in its box next to the pair of red patient shoes on her shelf. The tissue paper crinkles when she rests both atop his uniform, the latches click their metal tongues at her when she snaps them closed.

Later she sits on Raleigh’s bed and watches him carefully peel each picture from his wall, heart full from knowing he understands what it means to carry the past.

They don’t have much between them when it’s all done: clothes, pictures, books, and a chess set carefully put away. They don’t draw out their goodbyes. Herc shakes their hands and reminds them there will always be a place for them with the PPDC. Max whines at their ankles until Mako obliges. She bends down and gives him a parting belly scratch that leaves him a drooling lump on the floor. He looks at her expectantly when she stops, tongue lolling out his mouth, and Mako blinks against the sea-sting in her eyes. “Be a good boy.” she says fondly. Max wags his tail happily in response.

Tendo laughs warmly and kisses Mako’s knuckles with a salacious grin. “You’re responsible for him now.” Tendo warns her and Mako chuckles, flushed pink as she takes her hand back. “I think I am up for the challenge.” She answers, and Tendo nods sharply. “Best woman for the job.” His face goes still with unexpected seriousness and then he bows, back straight. “It’s been a privilege.” He says and she can feel the heat rise up her neck, curl over her ears as she returns the gesture. “ _Gokigen yō_.” Tendo tells her warmly, pressing a small cloth pouch into the center of her palm before he turns to Raleigh. She doesn’t open it, though curiosity trails its fingers down her spine, slips the pouch into her pocket for later.

“Don’t be strangers.” Tendo chirps as Mako and Raleigh walk away. If their eyes are damp and their feet reluctant to carry them away, no one can blame them.

-

Oxford, Ho Chi Minh City, Auckland, Sydney, Mexico City and Quebec.

One year becomes another. Then a third.

They move around, blown like loose leaves on a strong wind, stop only to take flight again and live all the while. Raleigh picks up a camera and a habit, snaps pictures of buildings and skylines, streets and zooming cars, store fronts, landmarks. Mako. He takes pictures of Mako looking at displays in windows in the early evening light, Mako in their series of apartments, face cast in the light from her computer screen. Mako cracking an egg against the green bowl Raleigh accidently broke one morning when he was trying to make waffles. Mako with a towel around her shoulder, arms crossed and smile small, her wet hair dripping blue (Raleigh learns that the dye smells and stains and absolutely will turn his hair an ashy blue if he doesn’t wash it out quickly. She has the picture to prove it. Raleigh puts the two side by side and proudly announces, “We match!”).

Raleigh works on his Japanese, practices it in conversations over dinner, in nearly illegible notes he leaves around for her to find (and occasionally correct). She keeps the notes, slips them inside a book and carries them from city to city.

They don’t need to keep still, don’t know how to without responsibility to anchor them. It doesn’t matter. They plant roots in each other that dig deep and hold fast, keep each other as fixed points while the world goes on turning around them.

-`

Mako sits on panels and hosts workshops at universities and consults for research facilities in the fields of engineering and advanced mechanics. Raleigh kisses her cheek in the morning before she leaves, small and affectionate and it still makes her giddy, the warm comfort of being loved.

She keeps Tendo’s parting gift in the storage compartment of the chess board, which is always unpacked and mid-game wherever they are. It’s not a secret. Mako has watched Raleigh turn the smooth rings over in his palm, slip one and then the other over his finger as though he’s memorizing the weight of them.

Mako’s studied them for herself, has wondered what Tendo used to keep the iron from rusting. It’s not a practical metal for jewelry making, but she knows why Tendo picked it, what it means to Raleigh and Mako to have this piece of her to keep.

There’s a question implicit in the roundness of those rings, one Mako thought he’d ask when she first showed Raleigh what was in the pouch, his face alight and his hands careful when he took them from her. But neither of them has ever asked it. There are other questions instead, questions about dinners and syllables, about the days they spend apart and the ones they’ll spend together.

Most nights, Mako comes home—different cities and different doorways but always home the moment the door closes behind her—and Raleigh calls out her name before she’s even put her keys away. “Mako.”

It’s never a question.

 

-

It’s a damn shame but gossip never stops being a billion dollar industry.

It’s not unusual to see their faces staring back at them, at newsstands or grocery store check outs, from the front pages of magazines under headlines like: _Ranger Romance Self-Destructs_ and _Jealousy Spoils Fairytale Ending_ and whatever else it is that sells papers.

Raleigh’s been called everything from burn out to lap dog but never forgets that he’s been called worse (that he’s called himself worse). They dig up every scrap of information available on them, together and apart; masticate the facts until they’re unrecognizable. They call her things like ambitious and single-minded, some use words like frigid. Raleigh knows he can’t march into every single one office to smash every last computer but that doesn’t stop him from wanting to. Mako laughs it off. He knows what she’s capable of when she’s been crossed, that she doesn’t need anyone to fight her battles for her. Once a reporter made the mistake of questioning the nature of her relationship with Pentecost, Mako didn’t so much as raise her voice and still tore the guy to pieces.

Despite what the tabloids speculate he doesn’t just follow her around waiting for attention. He’s no where near center stage anymore, but he doesn’t mind working in the wings. He keeps in touch with Herc, makes connections with fragments and off-shoots of the PPDC. They’re not actively recruiting new pilots but no one plans to be caught off guard again.

When there’s no work for him there he’s not afraid to look for it else where. He picks up construction again, the only thing other than jockeying he’s ever done with any consistency. Money isn’t something either of them really needs to worry about, one of the perks of saving the world is apparently, but Raleigh’s never been the type to do nothing. He’s been working long as he can remember, even after Yancy died and Raleigh walked away from Jaegers and heroics, he threw himself into the next thing available, spent years following the Wall along the Alaskan coast. Raleigh likes building, takes satisfaction in seeing a project come together after so long watching things fall apart.

“Besides, its good practice for the house I’m gonna build us.” He jokes one night, talking mostly to the bell peppers on the cutting board in front of him. Still it makes Mako look up from her laptop, eyebrow raised and mouth quirked in a smile. “Is that so?”

Raleigh’s grin widens at her curiosity, “Just tell me where.”

She claps her hands excitedly. “And a dog!”

“At least two. To start.”

They spend the rest of the night joking about moving to the middle of nowhere and the difficulties of raising cattle. “But we won’t eat them.” Mako says adamantly while she stirs the vegetables sizzling away in the pan. “You’ll build them a house and we’ll take care of them.”

Except that it isn’t really a joke. The keep moving from apartment to new apartment and Raleigh finds himself thinking about things like the number of rooms they’ll need, and windows and space for a garden, makes mental notes and tosses ideas out for her to consider. There’s no deadline for him to meet, just the knowing he’s gonna do it, and when he does it needs to be perfect for both of them.

Somewhere Chuck Hansen is laughing at him. The bastard.

-

They return to Hong Kong for the four-year anniversary of closing the Breach. Tendo comes, brings his wife and an erratic five year old that climbs all over both of them. Tendo’s face is careworn but his smile is brighter, he laughs at the sight of their bare hands. “Slow but steady right?” Tendo drawls, detaching his wiggling son from Raleigh’s back.

Their first night they have Herc over for dinner and Mako’s delighted when she sees Max in tow. The dog’s fatter and slower but his tail still wags energetically at the sight of her. Mako spends the night with Max sprawled over her lap, her legs half-asleep as he snores on-and-off. “He never could control himself around a pretty girl.” Herc says softly, beer bottle in hand, and Raleigh smiles at her, that slow sweet smile of his. It’s a good night. They talk about the last four years, Herc’s work with what remains of the PPDC. “There’s talk about repurposing some of the Jaeger tech. Lots of people interested in what the Drift can be used for.” She’s not unfamiliar with the topic, it comes up every few months, some overeager colleague seeking her out for her input. From her understanding Dr. Geiszler is now leading the field of neural experimentation. The Drift was created to battle monsters, she recoils at the thought of it being turned into a weapon for nations to use against one another, says as much as more when asked. Herc listens with the same serious consideration she remembers him for.  

He summons Max with a whistle at the end of the night, she wiggles the pins from her legs in order to see him out.

The next night they’re all together again, meet on the shores of Hong Kong Bay and stand in silent commemoration while the night deepens around them (it’s called the Graveyard of Heroes now. There’s a memorial, steel and stone with the name of every fallen Ranger and Jaeger engraved on the surface. It’s easy enough to find the ones she’s looking for). Raleigh’s hand finds hers in the dark, warm and steady, and her heart hurts, lonely for all that it’s lost. She holds on tightly, reminds herself of everything that is there.

Herc makes calls and gets them clearance to go back to the Shatterdome. It’s waiting for them in the open water, empty except for shadows.

It doesn’t take them long to find their way to the empty hanger bay. If it was massive before its cavernous now, devoid of not only of its Jaeger but all crew and equipment. They sit on the floor now, knees touching as they look around.

“It’s not what I imagined, y’know,” Raleigh starts. He’s never broken the habit of starting conversations in the middle. She doesn’t mind, even if it takes Mako longer these days to work out where he’s started from.

“Coming back?”

He shakes his head. His hand lands warm atop her own, shifts, his thumb sweeps across her fingers in a gentle back and forth. “The world not ending. It’s—”

“ _Is it better or worse?_ ” She can’t resist interjecting, pleased when he looks back at her, smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. She meets his stare head on. She studies his face, his perpetual stubble and kind eyes, the line of his jaw and width of his nose. This is why he takes pictures, to keep tiny fragments of these passing moments. She wishes he’d brought his camera.

“Better. Definitely.” His smile broadens, his fingers squeeze around hers.

“Oh. Good.”

-

They stay in Hong Kong for the remainder of January. They rent a room and sleep in late, go out into the city’s bright lights and crowded streets at night fall. They turn their pockets out buying egg tarts and bowls of beef noodles, share warm puffs of _gai daan jai_ as they walk without any particular destination in mind. There are new buildings now to replace the ones lost in the attack four years ago, but the bone slums remain the same. The skeletal frame of the kaiju is still embedded among the other buildings, the bare bone of its skull still covered in candles. It bruises inside to know there are really people alive waiting for those things to return. Mako links their arms together and quickens their pace, takes them back the way they came and away from the sight a long dead kaiju’s sun-bleached bones.

It feels like a vacation, the kind Raleigh used to dream about, a long time ago. Nothing to do and good company—the best company—playing the tourist with his camera in hand. It starts raining their fifth night there, the kind of rain that reminds Raleigh of the night they fought Leatherback and Otachi, torrential and noisy against the windows of their hotel room. They stay in. Mako sets up the chessboard on the bench seat that runs along the window and they pick up their game where they left off in Illinois. She’s a better player, but he can still throw her, whether it’s by an unexpected move on the chessboard or—

“Cheat!” Mako laughs when he pulls her to her feet. The radio’s on in the background, playing something slow and sad (at least he thinks it’s sad, his Cantonese is rusty these days), too slow to really dance to but that doesn’t stop Raleigh from spinning them both in a clumsy circle. “This is why we never finish a game you know, you’re always playing dirty.” Mako scolds, but he doesn’t miss the grin she hides against his chest.

“I play to win sweetheart.” He says cockily, and Mako looks up at him, head tilted to the side, a challenge in the set of her mouth and an invitation in her eyes as she raises her arms to put them around his shoulders. She presses closer, crowds him backwards a few steps until his legs bump into the bed. Her mouth is soft against his, sweet with milk tea, and Raleigh loosens his grip to get a better hold of her, to curve closer and—

She moves quickly, upsets his balance and knocks him over completely. The bedding whooshes under their combined weight. Mako’s laughing face hovers close to his as she stares down at him. “Cheat.” Raleigh bleats when her hands go to the hem of his sweater, pushing it up and out of the way.

“You see,” she says, small hands covering the span of his ribs, the pattern of scars left by the circuitry burns that wrap around his chest now instead of only his left side. Mako stares at them briefly as she does every time, not with morbid curiosity or pity, it’s something else all together; something that makes Raleigh’s lungs pinch and his blood rush in his ears. Mako’s eyes stray from the scars and find his instead, hold his stare until she’s leaned down to his ear. Her mouth plays dangerously close when she whispers, “I play to win too.”

This is not a game Raleigh minds losing.

-

The human mind is nothing more than a series of yet unlocked mysteries. For all that’s been discovered and explained since the first neural handshakes took place, there’s still so much they’re only guessing at, things they’re piecing together as they go along.

Every year that passes is another year without Drifting, another year where their shared memories grow more out of focused, become more like second-hand stories rather than shared experiences. But for all that those memories recede; sleep proves an unfailing beacon, with the power to summon them at breakneck speeds and knock Mako back.

Sleep—dreams, so slippery underfoot, so—

_She dreams of her mother, bitter with cigarette smoke and loneliness, and Yancy tangled in wires and Sensei reading to her in his adolescent Japanese, syllables soft as porridge in his mouth—_

_—Urashima and a kingdom beneath the sea with floors of cool marble but that wasn’t what they found there just darkness and fire and Pentecost engulfed in flame like he was once enshrined by the sun and her shoes so shiny and new on her feet she could ignore how they pinched her toes_

Mako rises out of sleep, breaks the surface of consciousness, and feels him come awake besides her in almost the same breath.

She touches the back of his hand where it rests over her navel, breathes out, out, out like she can expel the dream and set order in a breath. His fingers curl slightly over her skin, his forehead presses against her shoulder, his brow warm with sleep.

“Does it have a happy ending?” Raleigh asks, voice rough (her heart beats hard inside her chest, chases after ghosts it’ll never catch) and Mako turns more fully towards him. He keeps his eyes closed, rests his head against her chest as she slips her leg over his hip, close,close,close the only comfort available to either of them in moments like this.

 _No. He goes home and finds everything has gone on without him and he is alone except for a box he was not meant to open._ “Not really.”

“Okay.” Raleigh mumbles, mouth brushing over her throat briefly, already more asleep than awake. Outside the rain has quieted to a slow drumming song against the glass. _You can always find me in the Drift_ he’d said but Mako can never keep him. Mako touches her fingertips to Raleigh’s shoulder, wraps her arms more securely around him and rests her chin against the top of his head. Raleigh’s hand squeezes at her hip, “That’s okay.”

-

March finds them in Nova Scotia. Her assignment is short-lived but she doesn’t seem in a hurry to accept another once it’s done. “I’ve never been camping,” she says, and he knows that like she knows he and Yancy spent their summers outside, staring up at the sky dreaming about a future that was nothing like the one they got.

“Then let’s go camping.”

They rent a car; pack up their belongings and drive, pop music blaring from the speakers as they make their way past empty landscapes. Mako borrows his camera when it’s his turn to drive, demands he pull over when she spots a herd of cows grazing on a hillside. She poses him against the fence, holds the camera up and doesn’t need to tell him to smile.

They bypass the parks and camp grounds; drive until nightfall forces them to stop. There’s the unfamiliar quiet of nature, deep-set quiet that seems perpetually undisturbed no matter what noise they make. Under the wide expanse of sky the world feels big again in a way it hasn’t in years, perhaps not since the first kaiju hit land and everything felt like it was closing in or running out.

The night is freezing; they sit hip to hip with an insulated blanket draped over their shoulders, campfire crackling in front of them, smoke and embers flying up into the air and disappearing into nothing. Raleigh talks about those camping trips long ago, about learning how to light a fire through trial and error and the time Yancy singed his eyebrows. Mako’s laughter rings out across the clearing, gets swallowed by the darkness like it’s meant to be contained there, the sound only for them.

“Maybe tomorrow we should stay inside.” Mako says, her nose red with cold as they align the zippers of their sleeping bags to join them together.

Mako’s hands are freezing despite her gloves, her fingertips jolting wherever they land as she tries to warm them against his stomach, the metal surface of her ring makes him flinch whenever it touches. He takes her hands and rubs heat back into them between his palms, their rings catch against one another now and again. Months since Hong Kong, it still takes some getting used to the weight of that ring on his finger.

Mako sighs, warm and half-asleep besides him, so Raleigh touches his nose to her cheek just to hear her whine about how cold he is. _Aishitemasu_. Mako makes a small appreciative hum at the back of her throat and Raleigh wonders if she heard him. “I know.” she says, voice low and sure, and Raleigh nods (she does, she does). “Let’s stay here.” Mako says, just as softly, like she’s sharing a secret that’s just for them, “You and me. And the dogs. We’ll have to get the dogs, but once we do they can stay too. Yes?” He can’t see her face in the dark, but he can press his forehead against her head, can grasp her hands and told tight, can kiss her cheek and the side of her nose and make her laugh at his poor aim. “Works for me.” He says at last, not nearly as quiet as her, and Mako turns her head a little and kisses his chin, and Raleigh doesn’t get anything else out. His smile is too wide and his throat too tight to speak.

If there are even words for this. Whatever they are, Raleigh doesn’t know them yet.

He’s not worried. They’ll find them together.


End file.
